Category: featured

Lessons Learned

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             I was at the press conference on pre-kindergarten legislation today because of a teacher and a student.

Nancy Grasmick, the State Superintendent of Schools, was a guest lecturer the first year I co-taught the Legislation class at the University of Maryland Law School.

For the next 18 years, she spoke to the students about bills from the most recent General Assembly session.

And she spoke to me about getting more involved in education issues, taking political risks for the betterment of our children.

Bill Ferguson was a student in the Legislation class in 2008.  Before law school, he taught in a Baltimore City school as a Teach For America member.

He was elected to the State Senate in 2010.

At a gathering of education advocates before Bill’s first session (my 29th), I said to him, “The two of us should work together on education issues.”

Last year, we introduced legislation that would have funded a competitive grant program to stimulate innovation and expand access to high-quality early childhood education.

Today’s press conference was about a similar bill.  It will be introduced by the O’Malley-Brown administration.

Asking the right person to ask the question

| by delsandy | featured, Sandy's 2014 Legislative Diary | 1 Comment on Asking the right person to ask the question

             You always want someone in the room when the decisions are made.

That’s the role a good co-sponsor of your bill can play.

Today, I wanted someone in the room when the questions are asked.

So I asked a committee member who understood my issue to raise the subject.

By chance, I ran into one of the witnesses before the hearing.

So I asked him the question myself.

“What’s the status of the new stables planned for Pimlico Race Track?”

He said he would get back to me after discussing the matter with someone who knew more than he did.

Early and informed decisions

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When I applied to college, my mother, Smith College ’45, was my guidance counselor.

Today, many students get advice from college admission counselors – if their parents can afford the hefty fees.

But those who are doing well in school but don’t have parents with a college education or  the resources to supplement their school guidance counselor are too often unaware of the colleges that meet their skills and needs, as well as the financial assistance that can make that education affordable.

The College Board and the State of Delaware have sent customized college information and application fee waivers to low-income high-achieving students.

The bill I’m drafting would require Maryland to do the same.

It should bring about a healthy discussion of the best way to make our high school seniors aware of their college opportunities.

Parties on

| by delsandy | featured, Sandy's 2014 Legislative Diary | No Comments

I’m a partisan guy – except when it can help pass my bills.

House Bill 125 would treat people trying to petition a law to referendum the same way as the people opposing that effort. It would criminalize the same conduct – fraud, duress or force – by either side.

The sponsor line reads, “Rosenberg, Parrott, Barve, Cardin, Ivey, and Summers.”

Delegate Parrott designed the software that was instrumental in getting marriage equality and the Dream Act on the ballot in 2012.

After he agreed that my bill would treat both sides identically, I asked him to sign on as a sponsor.

He brings added credibility to my fairness argument.

Individual privacy is not a liberal or conservative issue.

The government can access your emails and cell phone records. Drones and license plate readers are among the devices that capture this data.

Legislation addressing each of these issues will be introduced in both houses.

The two lead sponsors in the Senator are a Democrat and a Republican.

I suggested that we do the same in the House.

Delegate Smiegel, a Republican, readily agreed to join us.

Similar agendas, Crossing the Governor and the bridge

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“Mr. Obama plans to campaign in 2014 for universal preschool, an increase in the minimum wage and an administration effort to make college less expensive for the middle class,” reports the New York Times.  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/08/us/politics/obama.html

So do I.

Last year, Senator Ferguson and I introduced legislation creating a competitive grant program to stimulate innovation and expand access to high-quality early childhood education.  This year, the O’Malley-Brown administration will sponsor similar legislation.

“For every dollar invested today [in pre-K], savings range from $2.50 to as much as $17 in the years ahead,” concluded an affiliate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The minimum wage sets a fair standard for working Marylanders.  An increase will move people over the poverty line and stimulate the economy.

I met with labor lobbyists today to strategize and count votes.

Academic debt for college and graduate school tuition limits career choices and the budgets of young families.  I am working on legislation to eliminate tuition at a campus or graduate school of the University of Maryland system.

Graduates would be obligated to pay a pre-determined portion of their income for a certain number of years, basing their cost of college on their ability to pay.

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If you’re following the scandal over the decision to limit access to the George Washington Bridge from Fort Lee, NJ because its mayor did not endorse Governor Christie’s re-election, you know that the mayor said that the Christie-appointed executive  who did the deed “deserves an a—kicking.”

Christie’s crony is lucky. Tony Soprano would have whacked him.

January 8 – Winning the war on poverty

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Today is Day 1 of my 32nd Year in the House of Delegates.

More importantly, it is the 50th anniversary of the war on poverty.

At an event outside the State House, I quoted from President Johnson’s State of the Union speech when he announced the war on poverty.

“Our task is to help replace their despair with opportunity,” the President declared, “not only to relieve the symptom of poverty but to cure it and, above all, to prevent it.”

Given the misinformation from the right about the failure of the war on poverty and its emphasis on cash payments, even I was surprised at LBJ’s reference to curing and preventing poverty.

Ron Haskins was the principal Republican staffer in the House of Representatives when the two parties reached a compromise on welfare reform in 1996.

Haskins recently wrote, “The nation should face up to two facts: poverty rates are too high, especially among children, and spending money on government means-tested programs is at best a partial solution. On the other hand, providing government support to increase the incentives and payoff for low-income jobs and redesigning the nation’s welfare programs to encourage marriage hold great promise for at last achieving the poverty reduction envisioned by President Johnson.”

Since I have worked with Ron in the past, I emailed him this week, asking what we could do in Maryland to further those objectives.

Much has been accomplished but more remains to be done, I said at today’s rally. Welfare reform in Maryland has incentivized work and benefitted families. Expansion of pre-kindergarten, building upon Head Start, will prepare the next generation for the 21st Century economy.

Making the Case for Pre-K

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“He was a very strong presence without being conspicuous about it. If a fight broke out, he would try to negotiate. He knew who started it; he knew how to let everyone withdraw from it. He could get opponents on policy to see there was a principled compromise.”

In Annapolis, he might be called Soft Shoes, the nickname for the quiet but very effective Senator Harry McGuirk.

This praise, however, was from Bill Moyers – for a Kennedy and Johnson aide, Ralph Dungan, in his obituary today.

There are other ways to describe the person whose focus is moving public policy in the right direction, often by compromise.

Along with Senator Bill Ferguson, I introduced legislation in 2012 to expand state funding for pre-kindergarten to all 4-year olds.

This week, I was a validator when Lt. Governor Anthony Brown and County Executive Ken Ullman announced their universal pre-K proposal.

I explained to a reporter that the slots law already authorized spending for pre-k from the Education Trust Fund, which gets the lion’s share of slots revenue.

With pre-k now on the agenda of the three Democratic candidates for governor, my objective for the next legislative session is to make the argument for the benefits from pre-k funding among my colleagues, along with Sen. Ferguson and the advocates for pre-K.

If you build the case, the money will come.

Virgin and Politics – They’re not dirty words.

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“You may remember the bus ads that declared, “Virgin.  Teach your kids it’s not a dirty word.”

The creative mind behind that campaign was Hal Donofrio.

I was one of the political minds that helped initiate it.

With some research help from the clipping service maintained by my grandmother, mother, and brother Bruce and more recent data from the budget staff in Annapolis, I wrote the following letter to the editor of the Baltimore Sun in response to a recent op-ed.

 

Dear Editors:

Hal and Chuck Donofrio deserve the praise they received for their innovative media program to reduce unwanted teen pregnancy.  (“Abstinence with an attitude,” September 9, 2013)  http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-reimer-cfoc-20130909,0,6058067.column

Their efforts began with an ideologically bipartisan effort of state legislators.

Two pro-life members, Senator Frank Kelly and Del. Timothy Maloney, joined two pro-choice members, Senator Catherine Riley and myself, in advocating for increased funding for family planning and counseling, expanded adoption efforts, and a television-ad campaign to inform teens “It’s OK to say no.”

Nearly 2/3 of the members of the General Assembly signed our letter to Governor Harry Hughes urging him to fund an “historic legislative budget request.”

The Governor added $2.9 million to his budget for these programs.  This money, along with private funds raised by Hal Donofrio, began the media campaign.

The State currently promotes abstinence education to Maryland youth under two federal programs authorized by the Affordable Care Act of 2010.  Contraceptive education is also provided with these federal dollars.

In 1986, the birthrate among 15-19 year olds in Maryland was 40.2 per 1,000.  In 2011, it was 24.7.

We have made significant progress, but the need still exists.  We must think and work across ideological lines again.

Before the News is Fit to Print

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I plead guilty to introducing legislation after reading an article in the New York Times.
This time, however, my idea was fit to draft before the Times found it fit to print.

According to a front page story today about Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg:

 There is a framed copy of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 on a wall in her chambers. It is not a judicial decision, of course, but Justice Ginsburg counts it as one of her proudest achievements.

The law was a reaction to her dissent in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, the 2007 ruling that said Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 imposed strict time limits for bringing workplace discrimination suits. She called on Congress to overturn the decision, and it did.

 “I’d like to think that that will happen in the two Title VII cases from this term, but this Congress doesn’t seem to be able to move on anything,” she said.

 In those two recent cases, a 5-4 majority made it more difficult to win a fair employment case by narrowing the definition of a supervisor whose actions constitute a violation of the law and requiring that retaliation be the motivating factor for an unlawful act, not one of several causes.

In July, I asked that legislation be drafted to prevent Maryland’s fair employment laws from being interpreted by our courts in the same way.
It’s not the first time that I’ve done this.

Maryland also passed a law in response to the Ledbetter case. Senator Jamie Raskin and I introduced the legislation.

I gave Justice Ginsburg a copy of House Bill 288, signed by Governor O’Malley.

It was not the first time I met her.

In the fall of 1974, I took her class on Sex Discrimination and the Law.

Getting the numbers right early

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Inside baseball can make the difference between winning or losing a game.
Or passing or losing a bill in Annapolis.

Every bill gets a fiscal note.

It’s our budget staff’s best judgment as to the cost to implement the legislation.

A high fiscal note and your bill is dead.

If the bureaucracy does not like what you’re proposing, its estimate of the cost will be on the high side.

You are not powerless.  You can make your case to the fiscal note writer about the projected costs before the note is distributed at the bill hearing.

Or you can ask for the equivalent of  a fiscal note months before your bill is introduced.

If the cost of the Oregon tuition plan (students pay after graduation based on their income) is sky high, any bill won’t go anywhere.

That’s why I asked our professional staff to do a pre-fiscal note fiscal note.

The response raises important questions about both cost and implementation.  For example, Who will monitor repayments from alumni and how will noncompliance be addressed?  Could students opt out of the program and pay regular tuition?

Better to respond to those concerns now than next February.

 

  • My Key Issues:

  • Pimlico and The Preakness
  • Our Neighborhoods
  • Pre-Kindergarten
  • Lead Paint Poisoning